The Absent Uncle: Wordsmith

I’ve spared you readers one of those columns that starts out with the use of the ever-present dictionary in my office. However, today we return to my trusty Websters to unravel a conversation I had with a friend that presented a question I pondered for a bit of time before deciding to write about it.

Our discussion all comes down to two words: Embellishment and exaggeration. 

I proposed the difference between the two are definition and degree. He stood fast on not actively using embellishment in his vocabulary, instead using exaggeration. Sometimes “over exaggeration”.

Websters open, so here we go.  

Embellishment.  Have to go to the root word – Embellish: to decorate or improve by adding detail; to improve a story by adding detail, often of a fictious kind. (Definition shortened for column’s brevity sake.)

Exaggeration. Again, root word – Exaggerate: To think, speak, or write as is greater than is really so, magnify beyond the fact. Overstate. To increase by abnormal degree. (Definition also summarized to hold down the word count in the column.) 

I look at these two words and can see the similarity of meaning, however, neither lists the other as a synonym despite closely resembling each other in usage. 

So, let’s take a look to the other book on the shelf, right next to Websters: The Roget’s Thesaurus.

Looking both words up, neither uses the other in the definition, synonym, or as comparatively used in examples. So, it seems to come down to embellishment is adding detail of a possibly fictious kind vs. exaggeration is magnification by an abnormal degree. With one word you can add fictious details and with the other you can magnify by an abnormal degree. It would really seem the two words are very similar in usage and quite interesting that neither uses the other in being defined (at least with my two sources). 

My call, it really doesn’t really make a difference whether you use either word. The original facts are facts, whether you add possibly fictitious details or you magnify to a degree as to make the fact “abnormal” or, in my friend’s term, “over exaggeration”.

In today’s highly politically charged world, it is interesting that magnifying and/or adding possibly fictious details can be so closely aligned but yet considered separate by strict definition. 

It is all in the hands of a wordsmith. (Definition: a professional writer with a skillful, but often facile – reader, please take the time to check the wildly varied definition of this word! – use of language.